THUNDERSTORM: A Tool to Evaluate Dynamic Network Topologies on Distributed Systems

Abstract—Network dynamics, such as sudden changes in latency
or available bandwidth, have a significant impact on the
performance of distributed systems. While such dynamics are
common, especially in WAN deployments, existing tools lack the
capabilities to systematically evaluate the impact of such changes
in real systems. We present THUNDERSTORM, a tool to evaluate
the impact of dynamic network topologies on the performance
of large-scale distributed systems. THUNDERSTORM is a fully
functional tool that integrates with Kubernetes and can be used
to evaluate off-the-shelf applications. THUNDERSTORM defines
an easy-to-use language to describe arbitrarily complex network
topologies and dynamic events used to enrich the default container
composition descriptors. Our evaluation, using micro- and
macro-benchmarks, as well as off-the-shelf unmodified systems
(e.g., Apache Cassandra, MariaDB) shows that THUNDERSTORM
is easy to use, accurate in reproducing dynamic behaviours
and that it can help researchers uncover unexpected behaviours
otherwise very costly to reproduce in real deployments typically
captured only during malfunctioning periods.

, 2019